But the outskirts of Vallejo resembled the rural eastern area of Napa they’d just passed by, or even worse. Almost all of the buildings here seemed to be knocked flat, and what remained had been heavily burned. The multi-storied, steel-framed, concrete hospital itself was still partly standing, but the complex all around it was mostly collapsed ruins. No one around. Again, the Tikal image flashed into Jake’s consciousness.
“Stop over there,” Lauren said hoarsely, pointing at the northwest corner of the hospital building, near where the emergency ward entrance had been in the past. Jake glanced at his wife and he could read the concern in her expression, and something else, something harder to define, something a little darker…something he shared now—a kind of apprehensive sense of dread o
